If you own an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, you can have local news read to you by the voice of and the brain behind Amazon’s smart-speaker platform, Alexa. It’s called a Flash Briefing, and it’s now available for the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

If you’re unfamiliar with Amazon Echo products, the Echo and Echo Dot are wifi-connected devices for your home that you interact with using voice commands. Basically, you talk to Alexa, and Alexa answers you (unlike some people in your home). Alexa can search the web, make to-do lists that are accessible on your smartphone, play music, tell jokes, set a timer and order products from Amazon.

Flash Briefings are a key feature of Echo products, and are a way for news organizations and other information services to provide quick updates to Echo users. Echo comes preloaded with news agencies such as NPR, BBC and The Associated Press. Now, we’re part of the mix.

We’d love it if you would give us a listen. To activate our flash briefing on your Echo product, go to the Amazon Alexa app on your smartphone (available for Android and iOS), and search for Long Beach Press-Telegram, and click on “enable.” Or use this link: Press-Telegram flash briefing.

Once you’ve done that, getting the latest local news stories is as simple as saying “Alexa, what’s in the news?” or “Alexa, play my Flash Briefing.” You can also adjust the order that Flash Briefings are read and command Alexa to skip ahead to the next story by saying, “Alexa, next.”

Alexa is also readily available on certain Amazon Fire tablets and Fire TV products.

If you find yourself really, truly loving the new flash briefing from the Long Beach Press-Telegram, consider leaving a review in the Echo store on amazon.com so others can find our work.

And if you have an Echo product, we’d love to hear your feedback on the new skills. Email us your thoughts at online@scng.com.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.